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Cease-Fire Collapses; IDF Soldier Feared Captured

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Israeli soldiers seen at a deployment area near the border with the Gaza Strip, on July 28, 2014. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.

An Israeli soldier is feared captured near Rafah, Israeli media reported, and a cease-fire collapsed in its first hours.

The army spokesman said there is a suspicion that the soldier was captured during exchanges of fire between Hamas militants and Israeli troops on Friday in the southern Gaza Strip. His family has been informed, the spokesman’s office said.

The suspected abduction occurred when gunmen opened fire on IDF troops in the southern Gaza Strip city. The army is conducting extensive searches and efforts to resolve the situation, army sources toldthe Ynet news site.

Israel Radio quoted Moussa Abu Marzouk, a Hamas official based in Cairo, as saying that the group was holding a an officer and that he was captured before the cease-fire’s 8 a.m. start.

Israeli army officials said the fire fight in Rafah and the capture took place 1.5 hours after the start of what was supposed to be a 72-hour U.S.-U.N.-brokered cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.

U.N. special envoy Robert Serry said Friday in a statement that he was informed by Israel of “a serious incident this morning” during the truce involving “a tunnel behind IDF lines in the Rafah area of the Gaza Strip,” in which two soldiers and multiple Palestinians were killed.

“The United Nations is not in a position to independently confirm these reports,” Serry says. If confirmed, however, “this would constitute a serious violation of the humanitarian cease-fire in place since 8 a.m. this morning by Gazan militant factions, which should be condemned in the strongest terms.”

Obama administration officials called the capture “barbaric” and “outrageous.”

“That would be a rather barbaric violation of the cease-fire agreement,” Josh Earnest, the White House spokesman, told CNN on Friday.

“This is an outrageous action and we look to the rest of the world to join us in condemning it,” Tony Blinken, a deputy national security adviser, told MSNBC.